The Problem with the New American Exceptionalism

There were a couple of moments in the course of my trip to Florida for the final debate these last few days that came to illustrate for me that the whole idea of American Exceptionalism has become something that is theological and beyond politics and, therefore, a burden on our national character, a limitation on our national political imagination, and a hindrance to the ability of our politics to be the vehicle to find solutions to our most vexing national problems. We have become so musclebound in our self-regard that we no longer are flexible enough to cope with the challenges that arise in a changing world.

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Often, it is simply a rhetorical trope: A rousing finish to a long day on the stump in Iowa or Nevada. The Greatest Nation on Earth. (Founded, apparently, by Ringling Brothers.) The One Indispensible Nation. The Shining City on the Hill. (Copped that one from icebound Puritans who were really talking about the ties that bind a political commonwealth. Ho, ho.) Sometimes, it sounds like we're all reciting the formulas from the old Nicene Creed: God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, or one, holy, Catholic and apostolic. Emotionally, we have internalized the litany to the point at which it has moved beyond all critical examination because to do so is the equivalent of critically examining why we laugh at piefights, or cry at the end of Old Yeller, or find inexpressable solace in the rituals of the solemn High Mass. The problem is that this kind of reflexive credal reassertion of our own exceptionalism — as though it were a hard and fast historical fact, rather than a profession of a kind of civic religion — can blind us to the mendacity in our midst and anesthetize us to the point at which we don't notice the wounds to self-government until we've started to bleed out from them.

Which brings us to the two moments in question. The first came in the debate on Monday night, and it came when Willard Romney was floundering around trying to justify his long-expressed untruth that the president engaged in an "apology tour" upon first taking office in 2009. Romney said: "America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators."

This is an ahistorical absurdity to rival what Gerald Ford once said about the nations of the Soviet bloc, let alone anything Dan Quayle or Sarah Palin ever has said. It is so far beyond the historical facts as to be a disqualifying moment for any American political candidate. If you don't believe me, I'm sure we can find enough elderly Guatemalans, Chileans, Nicaraguans, Filipinos, Iraqis, and, yes, Iranians to establish a quorum and vote on the proposition. The problem, of course, is that no American president, and certainly not this one, can make the obvious counter-argument — that America, for a multitude of reasons, has dictated to countries, enabled its client tyrants to do so, and facilitated the overthrow of other tyrants, most of whom were people with whom we had not done business. The only possible exception is Jimmy Carter, who tried to make "human rights" the central focus of his foreign policy, and who got roasted on a spit for having done so. The reason no president can do so is the creed of American Exceptionalism, which requires every president to pay homage to the unalloyed good that America has done in the world since its god-kissed founding. Therefore, we keep making the same mistakes, over and over again. How do you suppose the average Uzbek feels about us coddling Islam Karimov, who's been known to toss his political opponents into a pot and boil them, because we need his airports and air space? But realpolitik is tangible and quantfiable. Exceptionalism is a belief, immune to facts. It has been argued that Exceptionalism is aspirational, that it is an ideal that we struggle toward, but that is not the way it is sold to us in our politics. In our politics Exceptionalism is complete. It is total. It is one, holy, catholic, and, occasionally, apostolic. Right now, Islam Karimov is one of its apostles in west Asia.

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The other episode came when, alas, my man Chuck Todd sent out an ill-conceived tweet on the subject of whether or not we can trust the machines that increasingly have come to control our elections or, more to the point, whether or not we can trust the people who create, operate, or service them. My man wrote: The voting machine conspiracies belong in same category as the Trump birther garbage.

The comparison is bad enough on its face. There is documentary evidence to contradict what Donald Trump has said about the president's birth. Moreover, common sense demonstrates, time and time again, that Trump is unworthy of belief on anything he says about the president. But there is even more documentary evidence that voting machines are inexcusably easy to finesse and finagle, and not all of it comes out of the wilder shebeens along the docks of Blogistan, either. In the current issue of Harper's, Victoria Collier has a broad and extremely useful — to say nothing of its being utterly depressing — survey of the state of mechanized electoral chicanery. (Among other things, Collier makes a solid case that Ohio got stolen out from under John Kerry in 2004.) In it, she cites critical studies of voting machines done not by bloggers with their hair on fire but, rather, by places like the Brennan Center and Johns Hopkins University.

What I think we're seeing here from my man Chuck, I fear, is not so much careful journalism as it is the will not to believe. He has spent so much time on the road, crunching numbers and talking to campaign operatives, that he has become wholly invested in the Exceptionalist notion that the country knows better than any other how to run a national election. This is, of course, nonsense, and I fear that events on November 6 will bear me out on this. And, given that there is overwhelming evidence of a national campaign to suppress the potential vote through the law, why should be not believe in a parallel effort to influence votes after they are cast? Why should we believe that the national campaign to rig an election is purely legal, and not technological? The only reason is that we don't want to believe it.

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The will not to believe is the shifting sand beneath the unstable entire architecture of American Exceptionalism. Because our attachment to the idea is theological, and not empirical, we can neither look at our history nor our politics honestly. Eventually, the lies pile up, one atop the other, and you get a Willard Romney, who runs an entire campaign based on self-refutation and deceit. Eventually, the elections become electronic Kabuki. Our elections must be honest, not because we make them so, but simply because they are ours. It will all work out right in the end because this is America, fk yeah, the shining city on a hill. Faith eventually undermines reality. We start believing in spirits and incantations. And then we fall, hard.